Once in the open air again, with the sunshine streaming upon him, Garrison felt a rebound in his thoughts. He started slowly up the road to Branchville, thinking of the murder as he went.

The major requisite, he was thoroughly aware, was motive. Men were never slain, except by lunatics, without a deeply grounded reason. It disturbed him greatly to realize that Dorothy might have possessed such a motive in the danger of losing an inheritance, depending upon her immediate marriage. He could not dismiss the thought that she had suddenly found herself in need of a husband, probably to satisfy conditions in her uncle's will; that she had paid Mr. Hardy a visit as a bride, but without her husband, and had since been obliged to come to himself and procure his professional services as such husband, presumably for a short time only.

She was cheating the Robinsons now through him.

Of this much there could be no denial. She was stubbornly withholding important information from himself as the masquerading husband. She was, therefore, capable of craft and scheming. The jewel mystery was equally suspicious and unexplainable.

And yet, when his memory flew to the hour in which he had met her for the very first time, his faith in her goodness and honesty swept upon him with a force that banished all doubt from his being. Every word she had uttered, every look from her eyes, had borne her sincerity in upon him indelibly.

This was his argument, brought to bear upon himself. He did not confess the element of love had entered the matter in the least.

And now, as he walked and began to try to show himself that she could not have done this awful crime, the uppermost thought that tortured his mind was a fear that she might have a genuine husband.

He forced his thoughts back to the box of cigars, through the medium of which John Hardy's death had been accomplished. What a diabolically clever device it had been! What scheme could be more complete to place the deadly poison on the tongue of the helpless victim! The cigar is bitten—the stuff is in the mouth, and before its taste can manifest itself above the strong flavor of tobacco, the deadly work is done! And who would think, in ordinary circumstances, of looking in a cigar for such a poison, and how could such a crime be traced?

The very diabolism of the device acquitted Dorothy, according to Garrison's judgment. He doubted if any clever woman, perhaps excepting the famous and infamous Lucrezia Borgia, could have fashioned a plan so utterly fiendish and cunning.

He began to reflect what the thing involved. In the first place, many smokers cut the end from every cigar, preliminary to lighting up to smoke. The person who had loaded this cigar must have known it was John Hardy's habit to bite his cigars in the old-fashioned manner. He hated this thought, for Dorothy would certainly be one to know of this habit in her uncle.

On the other hand, however, the task of placing the poison was one requiring nicety, for clumsy work would of course betray itself at the cigar-end thus prepared. To tamper with a well-made cigar like this required that one should deftly remove or unroll the wrapper, hollow out a cavity, stuff in the poison, and then rewrap the whole with almost the skill and art of a well-trained maker of cigars. To Garrison's way of thinking, this rendered the task impossible for such a girl as Dorothy.

He had felt from the first that any man of the inventive, mechanical attributes doubtless possessed by Scott could be guilty of working out this scheme.

Scott, too, possessed a motive. He wanted money. The victim was insured in his favor for a snug little fortune. And Scott had returned to Hardy's room, according to Mrs. Wilson, while Hardy was away, and could readily have opened the box, extracted one or two cigars, and prepared them for Hardy to smoke. He, too, would have known of Hardy's habit of biting the end from his weed.

There was still the third possibility that even before Dorothy's visit to her uncle the cigars could have been prepared. Anyone supplied with the knowledge that she had purchased the present, with intention to take it to her uncle, might readily have conceived and executed the plan and be doubly hidden from detection, since suspicion would fall upon Dorothy.

Aware of the great importance of once more examining the dead man's effects at the coroner's office, Garrison hastened his pace. It still lacked nearly an hour of noon when he re-entered Branchville. The office he sought was a long block away from his hotel; nevertheless, before he reached the door a hotel bell-boy discerned him, waved his arm, then abruptly disappeared inside the hostelry.

The coroner was emerging from his place of business up the street.
Garrison accosted him.

"Oh, Mr. Pike," he said, "I've returned, you see. I've nearly concluded my work on the Hardy case; but I'd like, as a matter of form, to look again through the few trifling articles in your custody."

"Why, certainly," said Mr. Pike. "Come right in. I've got to be away for fifteen minutes, but I guess I can trust you in the shop."

He grinned good-naturedly, opened the drawer, and hurriedly departed.

Garrison drew up a chair before the desk.

At the door the hotel-boy appeared abruptly.

"Telegram for you, Mr. Garrison," he said. "Been at the office about an hour, but nobody knew where you was."

Garrison took it and tore it open. It read:

"Return as soon as possible. Important.

"DOROTHY."

"Any answer?" inquired the boy.

"No," said Garrison. "What's the next train for New York?"

"Eleven-forty-five," answered the boy. "Goes in fifteen minutes."

"All right. Have my suit-case down at the office."

He returned to his work.

Ignoring the few piled-up papers in the drawer, he took up the three cigars beside the box, the ones which had come from Hardy's pocket, and scrutinized them with the most minute attention.

So far as he could possibly detect, not one had been altered or repasted on the end. He did not dare to cut them up, greatly as he longed to examine them thoroughly. He opened the box from which they had come.

For a moment his eye was attracted and held by the birthday greeting-card which Dorothy had written. The presence of the card showed a somewhat important fact—the box had been opened once before John Hardy forced up the lid, in order that the card might be deposited within.

His gaze went traveling from one even, nicely finished cigar-end to the next, in his hope to discover signs of meddling. It was not until he came to the end cigar that he caught at the slightest irregularity. Here, at last, was a change.

He took the cigar out carefully and held it up. There could be no doubt it had been "mended" on the end. The wrapper was not only slightly discolored, but it bulged a trifle; it was not so faultlessly turned as all the others, and the end was corkscrewed the merest trifle, whereas, none of the others had been twisted to bring them to a point.

Garrison needed that cigar. He was certain not another one in all the box was suspicious. The perpetrator of the poisoning had evidently known that Hardy's habit was to take his cigars from the end of the row and not the center. No chance for mistake had been permitted. The two end cigars had been loaded, and no more.

How to purloin this cigar without having it missed by Mr. Pike was a worry for a moment.

Garrison managed it simply. He took out a dozen cigars in the layer on top and one from the layer next the bottom; then, rearranging the underlying layer so as to fill in the empty space, he replaced the others in perfect order in the topmost row, and thus had one cigar left over to substitute for the one he had taken from the end.

He plumped the suspicious-looking weed into his pocket and closed the box.

Eagerly glancing at the letters found among the dead man's possessions, he found a note from Dorothy. It had come from a town in Massachusetts. The date was over six weeks old.

It was addressed, "Dear Uncle John," and, in a girlish way, informed him she had recently been married to a "splendid, brilliant young man, named Fairfax," whom she trusted her uncle would admire. They were off on their honeymoon, it added, but she hoped they would not be long away, for they both looked forward with pleasure to seeing him soon.

It might have been part of her trickery; he could not tell.

The envelope was missing. Where Hardy had been at the time of receiving the note was not revealed. The picture postal-card that Pike had mentioned was also there. It, too, apparently, had come from Dorothy, and had been sent direct to Hickwood.

Once more returning to the box of cigars, Garrison took it up and turned it around in his hand. On the back, to his great delight, he discovered a rubber-stamp legend, which was nothing more or less than a cheap advertisement of the dealer who had sold the cigars.

He was one Isaac Blum, of an uptown address on Amsterdam Avenue, New York, dealer in stationery, novelties, and smokers' articles. Garrison jotted down the name and address, together with the brand of the cigars, and was just about to rise and close the drawer when the coroner returned.

"I shall have to go down to New York this morning," said Garrison. "I owe you many thanks."

"Oh, that's all right," Mr. Pike responded. "If you're goin' to try to catch fifteen, you'd better git a move. She's whistled for the station just above."

Garrison hastened away. He was presently whirling back to Dorothy.

His "shadow," with his bruised hand gloved, was just behind him in the car.